He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother Jack McDuff

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Eugene McDuffy got his start as a bass player for cats like Joe Farrell and Denny Zeitlin, but the man better known as Brother Jack McDuff didn’t make any real waves until he jumped behind the Hammond B-3 organ; up there with Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Charles Earland, McDuff is one of the deities of the instrument. 1969’s Gin and Orange alternates studio tracks with live cuts, and features Phil Upchurch on bass, Morris Jennings on drums, and Jerry Byrd on guitar, among others.

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Tame One

by Damian Ghigliotty

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There’s a good chance that Rahem “Tame One” Brown will prove himself right when he says that he’ll probably rap till he’s seventy. If not, expect his name to continually pop up until that day comes—even if it’s written on a warehouse wall out in the depths of New Jersey, undetected by Google Satellite.

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Follow the Pharoah

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As a teenager, the adventurous tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders backed singers like Bobby Bland and Junior Parker, but the Little Rock native was not destined for the blues life. Instead, Sanders fell in with the jazz crowd, working with everyone from trumpeter Don Cherry to saxophone great John Coltrane.

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Free Quantic Track!

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Last month, Will “Quantic” Holland dropped his latest record, Dog with a Rope, on the U.K.-based Tru Thoughts label.

Download it here.

Phelps “Catfish” Collins, RIP

We’ve lost another one of the great ones, folks. Cincinnati guitarist Phelps “Catfish” Collins, of James Brown and P-Funk fame, died on August 6. The cause was cancer. He was sixty-six.

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